Preface

Twenty years ago, Zvi Lachman began drawing the faces of poets-those who are with us and those who no longer are. This catalogue-which is being published in tandem with the exhibitions at the Rubin Museum in Tel Aviv and at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York-presents a wide range of the portraits created by him.
In these drawings, Lachman aims to redefine the meaning of the portrait. The instances of abstraction in his works exist in sharp tension with the human, personal contours of each face he observes. For him, each portrait is a human and spiritual identity imprinted upon a face, whose presence cannot be reduced to its tactile contours. He contends with the philosophical question of human presence and of its ever-changing nature, so that each depicted figure is not only an object of observation but also a contemplating subject.
Moreover, Lachman's art mobilizes the act of "pure" drawing in order to reprocess images that were already represented in other mediums (photography, poetry, literary biography); in drawing, he finds a rich visual form that allows for the disintegration, reproduction and defamiliarization of images, while calling attention to the relations between poetry and art. Shva Salhoov's insightful essay further focuses the viewer and reader's attention on the intimacy between the poem and the drawing.
As Electronic media and the boundless reach of the Internet have come to render information instantly available-presenting it in a one dimensional, sterile and simplified form-Lachman remains committed to maintaining contact with nature and with human memory. We are thankful for the privilege of collaborating on this unique project, and for the opportunity to exhibit it in the U.S. and in Europe.
We thank all those who contributed to the success of both the exhibitions and the book: Shira Naftali at the Rubin Museum; Sylvia Herskowitz and Reba Wulkan at the Yeshiva University Museum; photographer Avraham Hai; writer and scholar Shva Salhoov; catalogue designer and producer Michael Gordon; assistant designer Oren Hadar; text editor Daphna Raz; and English translators and editors Gabriel Levin, Talya Halkin and Glendyr Sacks.

Carmela Rubin, Ayelet Danielle Aldouby, and Doron Polak